


High Flying Bird

by ThatwasJustaDream



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: M/M, closeted bi harvey, cocaine and disco era marvey, young mike
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:10:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23976496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatwasJustaDream/pseuds/ThatwasJustaDream
Summary: Jessica and Harvey are young, hard-charging corporate lawyers; kicking ass, hauling in cash, and not slowing down to take names. It's an era of easy drugs and endless partying, set to 'Take the Money and Run' playing somewhere in the background. For the most part they're happy to pretend the slick lives and the glib masks they wear are a good, and are comfortable - until the night Jessica removes one of Harvey's without ever meaning to.
Relationships: Jessica Pearson/Harvey Specter, Mike Ross/Harvey Specter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	High Flying Bird

**July, 1983**

In the nearly four years Jessica has known him, Harvey Specter has only worn two pieces of jewelry. 

On Saturdays and Sundays it’s a little gold cross around his neck, riding his t-shirt collar or hiding in the ‘V’ of a button down. 

“Ready to go, cowboy?” She picks him up one weekend around eleven a.m., headed for a client event at a horseback riding ranch in Connecticut, and catches it glinting in the bright July sun. 

“No more clients from Colorado-based companies,” Harvey says as he slides into her Maserati. “My ass is already regretting today.”

“Well,” she grins, “I only hope for your sake you don’t have a date tonight.” 

He tosses her a look at the double entendre, and they’re off. 

The cross is odd for more than one reason, but mostly because Harvey’s about as agnostic as anyone she’s ever met. Asking him about it feels off-limits, though. A lot about Harvey does, even to her. 

Weekdays, she supposes that the necklace lays in a drawer. Instead, it’s a silver, men’s Tiffany bracelet sitting tight and high up on his right wrist. Most people would never see more than a flash of it unless they’re around him a lot. It has a face plate - which is blank. Which makes even less sense than the cross, because Harvey Specter is many things, but shy isn’t one of them. Whoever’s name belongs there? He’d have it engraved if he wanted - even if it is, she suspects, a man’s name. He’s just that ballsy.

She did ask him about the bracelet once. 

“What the deal,” she asks, as he hands her a small stack of folders they need to confer on. “…with that?” 

“I’ll tell you on one condition,” he’d said it so flippantly, she knew a show-stopper was coming. “You tell me something .. _real_ about you. Something you’ve never told anyone, not even Daniel Hardman.”

Jessica had let it go. Maybe you can know too much about your friends and colleagues. But it nagged, the sight of that silver chain with no name.

~*~

“Thank you for letting me crash here,” Harvey said as his head dropped toward the pillow at one end of her sofa. “I owe you… as is so often the case.”

“You’ve got that right….” she watched Harvey sink into it, bare-chested and in his boxer briefs. They may have decided no more screwing each other, but looking was damn well free. “We cleaned up tonight, baby boy.”

Harvey burrows into the pillows, barely able to keep his eyes open from exhaustion and vodka as she heads for her bathroom in nothing more than a purple silk slip, her dress where it fell on the living room floor, dancing her way to the shower and kicking off her heels as she goes. 

It’s been delicious, taking Daniel and Louis for several grand on poker night. Better than their usual haul by a lot. Their haul, because of course they cheat together - and they know it’s a frigging miracle they haven’t been caught yet, by those two, ‘cause they’re sure as hell cheating, together, too. 

Harvey’s out deep when she tiptoes back; his arm flung over the edge of the couch, that damn bracelet loose on his bare wrist. He’s breathing so deep and even it feels like he won’t have a clue if ….

Jessica sits by him; shins on the floor, butt on her heels, eyeing it. 

‘Please…please, please….’

She whispers it like a magic spell as she reaches to unclasp it, sliding it oh-so-gently over his hand. She’s still dizzy from champagne and gin despite the shower - and wired, too, from the piles of cocaine Daniel keeps in his office safe for all-nighters and poker games. 

‘…don’t …wake …up … Harvey …don’t ….wake ….upppp.’

He doesn’t, and…she has it! She flips it over, and some small part of the bracelet’s mystery is revealed: beautiful words engraved in fine cursive….

_This above all: To thine own…._

Focused on the tiny letters, she don’t sense Harvey moving until he lunges - and then it’s an actual blur of him pushing her, up over her, grabbing her arm and twisting as she falls. He twists and doesn’t let go until she’s flat out and gasping, almost shouting in pain, throwing the bracelet away instinctively in hopes he’ll chase it and get the hell off of her. 

“Keep it,” Harvey looks grim, still up over her as it clatters across the wood floor.

Then he’s gone; picks it up with his fingers as he grabs his pants in his opposite fist. 

She’s halfway up to sitting when the throws the bracelet back at her - sidearm, and so hard that it hurts when it strikes her in the my sternum. “You want it? Then keep it.”

Well….bullshit. This degree of fury is over the top, even for a man who can get as angry as Harvey can. Jessica stays down, though; stays quiet, her heart still pounding, watching him as he grabs his shoes, shirt, keys and wallet and storms out of her place.

-*-

Harvey is in the office before anyone else on Monday. Jessica isn’t far behind; walks by his glass wall to see him pounding at his typewriter keyboard like a man doing battle.

“Nope,” He puts up a hand as she walks in. “I’m nowhere near ready to talk with you.”

“You don’t get to say that to me here. Not even if it’s personal, and not even if I screwed up. You don’t ever talk like that to me in this building.”

She watches him wilt under the words; sitting back in his chair as she walks over to him, takes his hand, and turns it over.

“Tell me,” She’s still angry, and dammit, hurt a little too, but she asks it gently as she sets the bracelet on his palm. “Tell me something ….real about you. Something you’ve never told anyone else.”

Harvey slumps, and for the first time this morning she notices the dark circles under his eyes.

“It belonged to a kid named Mike Ross,” Harvey said, his hand closing around it. “He was…. seventeen when I met him. His parents…they’d been mown down in a crosswalk. Drunk driver – the very first case I helped prosecute back when I was with the district attorn.…”

“I remember,” Jessica cuts in; hears the huff of surprise in her own voice. “The writer? Actor? Youngest guy ever to get a play performed off-Broadway?”

“I helped put away the man who took his family from him. But… I still failed him. I failed him completely.”

He stopped, and Jessica debated how hard to push. She could still feel it in her shoulder, where he’d twisted a night and a half ago. 

“Why is it blank?” She nodded at where Harvey was winding the bracelet around his wrist, snapping it shut. “That’s…what always made me want to look.”

“Mike had two of them made,” Harvey said, running a finger over the faceplate. “He engraved my name on one of them. He asked me to put his name on the other…when I was ready. It was …a gift.”

She watched Harvey run a thumb over the nameplate. 

“I won’t tell anyone,” she said.

“Tell them what?” he shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

“Harvey….” She made the decision to press her luck. “C’mon. You have to talk to someone sooner or later.”

“No…” Harvey said. “I really don’t.” 

“Tell me about him. Please?” Jessica said. “ Tell me about Mike Ross…who he was to you, and… what happened?”


End file.
